The present invention relates to apparatus for data transfer with record media such as flexible magnetic disks, or floppy disks in common parlance. More specifically, the invention deals with improvements in or relating to means for resiliently supporting an electromagnetic transducer in such data transfer apparatus or disk drives.
Disk drives for use with double sided flexible magnetic disks have been known and used extensively as computer peripherals. Typically, as disclosed for example in Shiroyama et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,611,257, a double sided disk drive comprises a pair of transducers for data transfer with the opposite sides of the disk. One of the transducers is mounted via a flexure seat on a carriage for movement across data storage tracks on the disk. The second transducer is gimbaled via another flexure seat on an carrier arm which in turn is pivotally mounted to the carriage. The carrier arm holds the second transducer spaced from the first recited transducer when no disk is loaded in the disk drive. Upon loading of a disk, then, the carrier arm is sprung to move the second transducer toward the first and hence to cause the two transducers to engage the disk therebetween for data transfer with the recording surfaces on its opposite sides.
As may have been experienced by some users, disk drives may be accidentally dropped from some height, either in use or during handling. Particularly vulnerable to the shock of such a fall is the flexure seat carrying the transducer on the carrier arm. When no disk is loaded in the disk drive, the carrier arm is sprung to, but not locked in, its retracted position, holding the second transducer away from the first, and so is relatively free to oscillate between the retracted and working positions. The flexure seat on the free end of the carrier arm is therefore very easy to be subjected to the full impact of the fall.
As currently fabricated, moreover, the flexure seat is a piece of resilient sheet metal that is as thin as 0.05 millimeter or so. Typically, it has two pairs of opposed U shaped slots cut therein for biaxially supporting the transducer in a gimbal fashion. Its minimal thickness, the two pairs of slots cut therein, and the transducer mounted centrally thereon combine to make the flexure seat all the more susceptible to permanent deformation or destruction as in the event of a fall of the disk drive. The transducer has become incapable of data transfer with the disk when the flexure seat ceases to function normally.